by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

May 28, 2009

Even as he declared, “There are many things I like and many things I don’t like” about the Obama administration’s first few months in office, the editorial page editor of The New York Times called Barack Obama “the most extraordinary president of my lifetime.”

“If nothing else, the Republican Party’s hysterical reaction to everything he does and says is testament to that fact,” said Andrew Rosenthal.

Obama was a central topic of Rosenthal’s May 19 talk from the bima of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, where the Montclair resident delivered a broad-ranging address interrupted by frequent laughter.

“What is amazing about Obama is his incredible sense of calm,” said Rosenthal. “I think it conveys a real sense of leadership.”

A Washington correspondent and news editor at the paper before moving to its editorial section in 2003, Rosenthal said Obama continues to confound his critics.

“Obama is governing the way he said he would during the campaign,” Rosenthal said. “He was never as liberal as the Right claimed he was or as conservative as the Left hoped he was.”

But, Rosenthal said, Obama’s “attempt to govern in a bipartisan fashion” is the president’s greatest weakness.

“If he is pandering to anyone, it is the Right, not the Left. It is costing him.”

In any case, said Rosenthal, “the Republicans have no intention of working with him. This apparently is their master plan.

“In 2008, the Republicans lost the election. In 2009, they’ve lost their minds. The Grand Old Party seems to be in the grip of a fringe group of crazy people who dozed right through the election.”

But it wasn’t all praise for the president.

“Obama is not doing very well in dealing with the detainees imprisoned in Guantanamo,” said Rosenthal. He criticized the president’s refusal to investigate members of the Bush administration on charges that they ordered and approved of torture.

“Obama got stuck with a lot of messes George Bush created. But you can’t fix things if you don’t know how they’re broken.

“I think our democracy is strong, and we can take the investigation, even if it leads to some pretty prominent people being indicted. Yes, I admit I have the occasional fantasy of Dick Cheney being frog-marched down Pennsylvania Avenue,” he said.

Turning to the Middle East, Rosenthal said the president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are making a genuine effort to get the United States engaged in ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The gulf in the room between Obama and Bibi Netanyahu was palpable,” he said, referring to last week’s meeting between the president and the Israeli premier. “Probably the best thing Obama can do is just stay engaged and nudge where he can, to remind people there are agreements on the books, and avoid the trap of moral equivalency.”

Rosenthal used the editorial “we” in referring to how the Times’ editorial pages view the situation.

“We think it is clearly in Israel’s interest to stop building settlements. Netanyahu apparently does not agree. He was talking about Palestinian self-government, not a Palestinian state. We still think, foolishly perhaps, it is possible to have two states there,” he said.

He said there were “suggestions that Netanyahu is going to press for a military solution in Iran. I think all indications are that Obama is going to resist that.”

He said a military attack on Iran “won’t work. There is not nearly enough intelligence on the Iranian nuclear program for a strike to be effective, and it would embroil everyone in another dangerous war, and Iran is stronger than ever, thanks to George Bush and the war in Iraq.”

Asked by an audience member whether he believed his newspaper to be “balanced” on the subject of Israel, Rosenthal said, “Generally our news coverage is, yes.

“The problem is there is no balance in this subject. There is no middle ground. Everybody has to take sides,” he said.

Rosenthal referred to an incident in 2002, when front-page coverage of the large Salute to Israel Parade in Manhattan was illustrated with a photograph of a small Palestinian counter-demonstration.

Seven years later, he said, that choice is still being roundly criticized as a prime example of the Times’ alleged bias against Israel.

“It was a weird overreaction by the foreign desk,” said Rosenthal, explaining why the newspaper’s front page had no picture of the vast crowd of pro-Israel parade-goers. The foreign desk “felt they wanted to balance the coverage by showing the protestors. But some stories don’t have balance. Some stories are 80-20.”

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Hard Times?

Given the desperate financial state of many American newspapers, Andrew Rosenthal was asked to speculate on the possible demise of The New York Times.

“I don’t think you can live without it,” he said. “The bottom line is the Times itself is very solid, very steady, and quite profitable,” although “we have been hit by enormous drops in advertising.”

Rosenthal said the newspaper “was on the verge of coming to some decisions on ways to get payment from readers and others who profit from what we do” on the web.

But, he assured the audience, “we are not on the verge of bankruptcy. We are not in default of our loans. We have all the money we need until 2013, and if the recession is not over by 2013, this whole conversation is pointless.”

— ROBERT WIENER

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